The sharing economy industry’s potential is massive; just five years ago, it was valued at $15 billion, but by 2025 it’s expected to be worth $335 billion. That is a staggering growth of 2233%.
In an industry dominated by a few centralized platforms such as Uber, Airbnb, Upwork, Fiverr, and a few others, it’s hard for new projects to survive unless they have incredible backing from investors, which is hard to come by.
However, to achieve this growth, something has to change, and that’s why TimeCoinProtocol (TCP) is offering a protocol where young projects can build a sharing economy service where value accrues to the worker rather than third parties, where creatives can easily and cheaply develop their platforms and deploy them without being held back by established industry giants.
dApps On TimeCoinProtocol
The platform is built on the EOS blockchain and serves as an open-source, community managed decentralized sharing economy protocol where decentralized applications (dApps) that realize the benefits of the sharing economy can be launched.
The platform facilitates open development of any sharing economy service where developers can innovate and build an imaginable type of sharing economy dApps. One such application is TimeTicket, a platform that connects individuals that wish to buy and sell skills or exchange knowledge. Sellers are allowed to post listings on the skills and knowledge which buyers purchase through a ‘ticket.’ The ticket is a token that entitles the buyer to set a portion of the time in which the seller will perform the agreed service.
The services on offer range from consulting, photography, and relationship counseling. Other potential use cases include programming, coaching, financial advice, and fortune-telling. The company has over 250,000 users who are sharing their skills using TimeTicket, with some users claiming to make as much as $10,000 a month.
Another dApp set to launch on TCP is eSportStars, which will allow game lovers worldwide to host tournaments and compete against each other. The platform will support Japanese, Chinese, and English languages and offer fans an incredible opportunity to compete against professional players, thus boosting their engagement and unifying the community.
TimeTicket is planning to expand its reach and recently managed to raise $3.2 million in equity. The platform is now launching an initial exchange offering (IEO) in Hong Kong to get the TCP up and running. There will be 100 million TimeCoins(TMCN) issued, with 58% of these coins allocated for the token sale.
The Problem TimeCoinProtocol Is Solving
Currently, the few players that dominate the sharing economy act as the gatekeepers of the sector. Their role is that of matchmakers and trusted intermediaries within the industry. The problem is that these platforms are driven to seek profit, and in this case, it’s at the expense of the users. Exorbitant fees and hidden costs can take their toll on users, clients, and service providers.
Some of these platforms will take as much as 30% of all the total transaction value, with some like Wag, a dog walking service taking as much as 40%. Freelancers on platforms like PeoplePerHour have to bear huge fees that take a chunk of their earnings after completing jobs before they incur additional withdrawal fees.
Another issue is that users can’t transfer their credentials from one service provider to another let’s say like from Freelancer to Upwork, meaning they have no option but to start afresh when they move to a new platform. Due to this, it’s not uncommon to find dissatisfied users who have to stick with a platform since they have limited options.
It’s such issues that TimeCoinProtocol is solving by granting all users on the dApps the ability to share their history and evaluation data with clients, including feedback, client ratings, and scores, thus offering them the freedom to work on whichever platform that best serves their interests.
Also, service providers benefit by easily identifying users who match their target demographics, thus saving significant costs that arise from untargeted, blanket customer acquisition-based advertising.
The Many Benefits
By decentralizing the sharing economy sector, TimeCoinProtocol hopes to allow small players maybe with even better ideas to enter the industry. The platform will also help the network participants get a fair share of their contributions. Additionally, the protocol will help solve data storage issues associated with centralized platforms and address censorship threats that lay with such platforms where a user, after spending years building their reputation and client base, can be kicked out of a platform without a warning.
